Winning A Triangular Bag

The Wednesday night indoor netball team finished its season with a minor-semi at 7.40, which we won, so it was followed by a minor-final at 9pm, which we also won. I think this means we came fifth in the grade. I don’t really know, or particularly care. They gave us triangular shoulderbags.
What I love about it
I don’t post much about the sporty stuff here, considering how much of my life revolves around it at the moment. I was gasping for opportunities to play sports I enjoyed in Edinburgh, and have dived right in now I’m back on familiar ground. Most weeks I’ll have two netball games, plus ultimate and basketball. It’s great.
I love the exercise, I love the competition, I love the challenge. I love being part of a team striving to execute well. I love being in a situation where failure to concentrate is immediately punished with a loss of possession or other kind of penalty. I love constantly responding to the changing conditions of the game – who’s ahead, how much time is left, who’s playing well, what the opposition are doing, what my team are doing, how tired I am, how tired everyone else is.
Most of all, I love getting into that headspace where you don’t think, you just act. That’s great.
I Ramble About My Past: Early Days
I was never remotely athletic growing up. I am in no way a natural athlete. In my family, the football World Cup exists principally as an excuse for my mother to bring up the hilarious experience of watching single-digit-age me attempting to play football.
(I remember quite enjoying playing, even though I knew that I was rubbish. I also still remember a couple of humiliating moments; those are the things that stick in the childhood memory the best.)
I did, however, develop a bit of enthusiasm for basketball. I played a bit at school with friends, we were all aged 9 or so and didn’t really know the rules so just made up stuff that sounded plausible. I was taller than the other kids, which helped with the interest I guess, but it was also the nature of basketball that appealed to me – a team game (I have a deep personal preference for team games, because they give me something other than myself to play for), in which a ball is played using the hands (which I was vastly more confident with than feet!), and with a fairly steady reward frequency (so I didn’t feel like I was wasting energy for little reward).
I Ramble About My Past: Latter Days
Fast forward to my latter years in high school. I started playing in the school’s basketball team, my first bout of serious sporting endeavour. It was a hard road. I wasn’t very good. But I got better, thanks to effort put in and some good coaching. By the end of school I could handle myself okay.
(I remember one of my teammates telling me I had been a subject of discussion, in which the conclusion was that I was “unco, but that made me good”. I was very pleased, because I knew I wasn’t the most co-ordinated guy around, but apparently I was turning my limitations into an advantage because I was unpredictable, or something or other. Heh.)
I have plenty of good memories of those two seasons. But I also had some pretty rough times. One of the bigger emotional experiences was desperately trying to stay out of that horrible pit of self-doubt that says, you’re not good enough. Give it up, go home, stop trying. Because I wasn’t good, I knew it, and time after time it was proven to me. Sometimes I just couldn’t do what I knew I needed to do. I tried as hard as I could and failed. And every time it felt like crap.
I Ramble About My Past: Life Lessons (With Stirring Orchestral Score)
I almost quit, actually.
(Hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about this. Huh.)
After a particularly dispiriting training session I came to the bleak conclusion that I was doing no-one any favours by continuing in the team, and the next day I would give it up. Who did I think I was fooling?
It turned out that I decided not to quit after all, but I don’t remember that bit. All that stuck in the memory was that feeling of frustration and disappointment, of not being able to achieve.
I guess this was what you call a ‘life lesson’. I hardened up, basically. Worked harder, concentrated more, kept trying, and sure enough I improved, a lot. School ended and I kept playing and kept getting better. Those hard times in secondary school were far behind me. I guess that is what you call a ‘happy ending’.
I Finally Start Getting To The Point
Alongside the basketball, I’ve played a lot of indoor netball through the years. In indoor netball you can shoot the ball from a distance to earn 2 points instead of 1. I was always okay at shooting that 2-point shot. For a while I was pretty damn good at it. It was a key part of my game.
So I come back home and I get back into basketball. It takes a few weeks, but the old game comes back, the shot comes back, the awareness comes back, the hustle comes back. Sure, I’m an old man of thirty now but I didn’t feel like I was rebuilding a skillset from nothing.
And I got back into netball, and a lot of stuff came back real fast. But the 2-point shot? That just didn’t. Weeks turned into months and I kept trying, putting up a couple a game, but the shot just wasn’t falling.
And it felt bad. It felt just like it had as a teenager, although less drama-queeny and more straight-out frustration. I knew I was capable of doing this thing, but I wasn’t doing it. I felt like I was doing everything right but it wasn’t working. I joked about it a bunch, but truth be told, it really started to bother me.
(There is an alternate universe where this same story is being told as a parable on the inevitability of physical decline and how we all must learn to cope with a reduction in our capabilities. But not in this universe.)
It’s a horrible feeling, that. Failing. Setting yourself a goal that you know you can meet, and trying your damnedest to achieve it, and falling short time and time and time again.
I Get To The Point
A couple weeks ago, with that horrible feeling hitting me, I suddenly realised that I had been going about everything wrong.
I’ve made some changes over the past few years. As part of these changes, I have a much better set of tools for dealing with challenges like this than ever before. I’m no longer a teenager feeling despondent and powerless.
I recognised that my mental state has been contributing to my continued failure to perform. My confidence had been eroded and I’d fallen into a negative feedback loop. I recognised further that many aspects of the physical are actually mental, and that I could improve my performance by coming at it from a perspective of self-awareness and self-control.
I decided to fix it. I shifted my perspective. I stepped out of the negative feedback loop. Most importantly, I decided to be confident.
Since then, my shooting percentage has shot up; it’s not where it used to be, but it’s getting closer all the time. More tellingly, playing feels different now. It feels right. My head is straight. It’s all good.
So, there you go. It worked.
And that is the point of this post.
Postscript
Now that I have made this post, the mystical laws of the universe will ensure I play like crap for at least the next three weeks.
Unless acknowledging these laws in this postscript changes their impact. The mystical laws of the universe don’t like to be predictable, after all.
Anyway, next time I have a crap game, I’ll just be able to shrug and say, ‘not my fault. Mystical laws of the universe. Sorry, guys.’